Thursday, November 20, 2008

I'm really sick of that ad campaign about "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," but it gave me an idea for a cartoon so I can't complain. To me, the funny thing about this cartoon is not the punch line, but the scalpel in the TSA agent's hand.

I travel a lot by aeroplane and, like many people with a reasonable I.Q. and a modicum of logic, I find the TSA folks to be exasperating. I've had harmless things taken away from me at security, the most notable of which was a plastic, space-age-looking child's raygun I had bought as a gift for a kid. The reason given was that the flight crew wouldn't have time to ascertain it was a toy if I tried to use it as a weapon. I'm not kidding.

The requirement of taking one's shoes off, even if they are flip-flops that could not conceal anything larger than a sewing needle, is another point of contention with me, along with the rule about liquids being in a plastic bag.

The concept of the bag rule is obviously to restrict the amount of liquids any one person can bring onto a plane; if you have more than can fit into a plastic bag of a certain size, you might have enough explosives to cause trouble. The logic of this is obviously flawed, five passengers could bring the legal limit and combine them on board, but more annoying than this blatent loophole is when you have only one tiny container and they insist you put it into a plastic bag. I've seen this on more than one occasion.

If they were actually making the industry safer, I'd be more tolerant of this kind of time-wasting nonsense, but studies continue to show it is just as easy to slip weapons past security as it was before 9/11.

I don't have an answer for this dilemma, of course, I just wanted to complain.

16 comments:

I flew in 2006 for the first time in 14 years and my small Eugene Airport was no problem. But when I got to San Francisco airport is was a pain in the A$$. They didn't have the liquids in a bag rule but they had the shoe thing. I didn't trust them to check anything and I was only staying a week so I just brought a big duffel bag and my laptop bag. I would do it again if I needed to and had the money.

I fly overseas occasionally and the differences in security in Europe are interesting to say the least. When I was a smoker it was really interesting, because you could take a chance of carrying matched through security and then getting caught by the dogs in the terminal. Or you could chew on Nicoret for half a day and not worry about it. Oddly, in the US the rule was no lighters or matches, but in Europe ( then) matches were banned but lighters were allowed. Figure that one out! Shoes are not bothered with in Europe, but Belts must come off. I gave up trying to figure it all out, truly if "they " wanna get ya, there is no stopping it.

Joe Foss an American Medal of Honor Winner during WW2 had his medal taken away at an airport, the pointed star could be used to throw at someone. Let's not forget that Mr. Foss was pushing 80 years old at the time.

For me it was baseballs. My Ph.D. dissertation is on the aerodynamics of baseballs (yes, I am in the baseball hall of fame or at least my dissertation is). But my bag of baseballs really threw "pun intended" the TSA guys off. It turns out the different densities of the ball with the cork and rubber center looks a lot like an explosive. After that I was wondering if someone took an explosive and put a leather round cowhide around it would that throw them off?

Now to be hissy I need so say something obvious... "my cat's breath smells like tuna".

Heard a story of a guy going through US customs at the Canadian border in his van. His kid had made a bomb out of toilet paper rolls taped together, construction paper, etc - BOMB printed on it in magic marker, you get the idea. It had been left in the van weeks before and forgotten about. Customs found it and it caused real trouble; hours of delay and the van torn apart - looking for ACME brand explosives, I guess.

Piraro, you are a weak and sad man. By my recollection, the above posts by sayotte and derek were harmless statements regarding your new "censored" blog. I didn't realize merely DISAGREEING with your new edicts warranted deletion. You may want to check yourself.

Airport InSecurity and TSA sucks in general, they don't make us any safer, just a gigantic waste of resources. Atlantic Monthly did a great article on TSA a while back on how useless they are as an organization. Great read.